The cabinet committee on government purchase on Wednesday approved a draft of the Terminal Use and Implementation Agreement to be signed between Petrobangla and Summit Oil and Shipping Company Ltd.
Summit will set up the third LNG floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) at Moheshkhali under Cox's Bazar district.
The government will provide $0.3 million to Summit as daily fee for regasification. The terminal will have a capacity of 600 mmcfd (million cubic feet per day).
The deal will be signed for a period of 15 years.
The regasification is a process through which liquefied natural gas is converted into gaseous state and then supplied into the national grid.
Presently, the country has two FSRUs with daily regasification capacity of 500 mmcfd each.
Of them, one terminal is owned by US Excelerate Energy while the other is held by Summit Group.
Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal chaired the virtual meeting that also approved a Petrobangla proposal to import 3.36-million MMBtu of LNG from spot market from M/S TotalEnergies Gas & Power Ltd, Switzerland.
This will be the first shipment of LNG in 2024 costing nearly Tk 6.917 billion.
Briefing the media after the meeting, additional cabinet division secretary Sayeed Mahbub Khan said the committee also approved tariff rates for two proposed solar power plants.
As approved, a consortium of Renewable Energy UK Ltd, Badal Construction Ltd and G-Tech Solution Ltd will set up a 100-MW solar power plant at Basail, Tangail.
The Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) will buy electricity from the plant at Tk 10.99/kWh for a period of 20 years.
The total costs approved for the procurement is Tk 35.61 billion.
He said the BPDB was also given approval to buy electricity from another 100-MW solar plant to be set up by a Consortium of KAI Bangladesh Aluminium Ltd and Altech Aluminium Industries Ltd at Cox's Bazar Sadar.
Electricity per kilowatt hour will cost Tk 10.98 while the BPDB is given approval to spend Tk 35.56 billion to buy power from the plant for a period of 20 years.
The meeting also approved three separate proposals for the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC) to import 120,000 tonnes of DAP from Morocco under a state-level agreement at Tk 7.53 billion.
It further approved five separate proposals for the Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC) to import fertiliser.
Under a proposal, the corporation will buy 30,000 tonnes of bagged granular urea from the local KAFCO at Tk 1.049 billion.
The BCIC will also import 10,000 tonnes of phosphoric acid for TSPCL, Chattogram, from M/S Sun International FZE, the UAE, at Tk 646 million.
Moreover, the corporation will import 30,000 tonnes of bulk granular urea fertiliser from Fertiglobe Distribution Ltd, the UAE, at Tk 1.089 billion and 30,000 tonnes of bulk prilled urea fertiliser from Muntajat, Qatar at Tk 1.089 billion, and another 30,000 tonnes of bulk granular urea fertiliser from SABIC Agri Nutrients Company, Saudi Arabia at Tk 1.089 billion.
The meeting also approved two proposals for buying SPC Poles for the Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board (BREB) under the project on electricity distribution system modernisation and capacity enhancement.
The BREB will buy 33,846 pieces of poles from Bangladesh Machine tools Factory Ltd at Tk 1.03 billion while the other proposal gave go ahead to buy 33,845 poles from a joint venture of Confidence Infrastructure Ltd, Castle Construction Ltd, Contech Construction Ltd, and Dada Engineering Ltd at the same rate.
The committee also approved procurement of soybean oil and lentil for the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh.
Mr Kamal also chaired another meeting of the cabinet committee on economic affairs on the day which approved import of 40-megawatt electricity from Nepal.
syful-islam@outlook.com